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An ex-raid leader, gamer extraordinaire.

Sunday, June 27, 2010

DPS in Trash

Gevlon doesn't disappoint with his latest post. Quote him:
"Posting damage meter on trash is considered impolite in WoW. There were even posts where this was considered "jerk" behavior, since "properly specced" DPS can't compete with a tank or a DPS who has a stupid AoE spec he made clearly to top the meters.
This is bullshit!"
You just gotta love the man.

For a long time, I've advocated using cooldowns and such in raid trash to speed up the process. It was even worse when I was level 70, a Rogue (We didn't have FoK back then) and on Karazhan stairs, an obviously AoE pull, I'd outdps several mages or warlocks randomly.

In Ulduar, there's this massive pull before General Vezax. Three of them, to be exact. There are 9-10 mobs each pull, and they can't be AoE'd. Or so our GM told us. We tried to sheep, hex, cyclone them so that tanks took less damage... Yes, no.

Even though I was an officer/raid assist, of course the GM's word was law. But not to my subjects. I told the DKs I had (We were three DPSers) to AoE shit down like their life depended on it, and to be ready to tank the sheep targets that they were likely to break. We pull, Team-DK goes nuts on bolts, we pull off around 30-35k DPS each, and the pack is down in meager seconds.

From there-on, those pulls became the most fun pull in Ulduar for us as I had successfully persuaded that they were AoE packs.

If there's something I hate more than raid trash, it's probably powerleveling (which I do with any-all characters I have a slight interest in playing). Raid trash is uninteresting, boring, heart-grinding. It's something all 25 people in the raid just want to get over with. So why not bring your A-Game to these ugly packs to make them die so fast it's actually a little fun?

I once even got a whisper once about my DPS in trash, pulling easily a few Ks over others, and the voice told me "Why do you use cooldowns and abuse the system on trash? Does pulling off more DPS make you feel a better player?"

There certainly is a notion, like Gevlon said, about people topping the charts. They "Abuse" the system. These people are the ones that say:

  • I don't care about DPS Meters (Then why do you play a DPSer?)
  • I cold easily top them if I could (Why don't you?)
  • I hate people who are obsessed with putting out highest DPS (Because you're not one?)
  • DPS doesn't mean skill (Both of which you lack)
Don't be deluded. Once at Freya, someone criticized me and a fellow Feral druid when we were "training" on Freya as the PvPers say. He said we were cheating the DPS meters because we were DPSing her when she was healing herself, so our DPS meant nothing. 

He completely ignored the fact that I was trying to roll a high-damage disease on her to spread to her adds, and that the feral was building combo points. But since most other DPSers didn't do anything to Freya, we were showing highest, and haters hated that we were cheating our way to success. 

There's one thing DPSers should know and care about -numbers. Beautiful, shady numbers. Our jobs is a quantitive one. We bring DPS, which is not an in-calculable objective. True, in some places, your DPS will naturally suffer, like when I was running around the room in General Vezax to Death Grip sparks to healers. I pretty much sucked those attempts. Does it make me feel useless? No, but I still make he best of my time when I'm not running around the room like a headless chicken, DPSing the boss to best of my abilities. For example, Yogg-Saron and the tentacles for the Brain Group. I'd have chance to kill one every few attempts when I didn't need to regain full sanity. Why shouldn't I do it, even if it's not my priority? 

Or, why shouldn't I work harder to do my job better?

Let the haters hate. Numbers don't lie. Yes, the person pulling off higher DPS than you are is likely (though not positively certainly) a better player. Conversely, you're a better player than the slackers in your raids. Just because people don't want to do what they were brought in to do doesn't mean those who do are evil, evil people. They just enjoy smashing skulls.

4 comments:

  1. As a MM hunter, Volley is my preferred method of dealing with thrash. I really just love how those high crits flow through my screen (I use the addon Parrot). However, most people will then look at the recount/skada/etc and say "LOL, huntard is only good at aoe". I don't just spam volley, I misdirect to the tank, I use multi-shot, I spread some serpent stings around, etc. Even though I just had to click on volley to top the meters, I go the extra mile and try to down the trash as fast as I possibly can. That's what sets me apart from those types of dps who only use their top abilities on bosses. I treat every mob as a boss and blow my cds accordingly.

    And the slackers that pick on me for my AOE? They're usually silent after I top the meters in single targets as well.

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  2. Are you even a raider? Have you done any hard mode raids before?

    **I don't care about DPS Meters
    I care about putting out the highest dps on the correct target. That's what matters, not some silly meaningless number that includes Lich King Ghouls AOE dps. Same for Deathwhisper. Maxmising dps means staying on the boss for 100% of the time, and AOE-ing all adds that are close using pestilence and DnD. The right thing to do is to switch to your assigned target.

    **I cold easily top them if I could
    I do top the meters quite a lot. Except for bad RNG. Bonespike by marrogar 5 times in a row. You still can't beat a pure dps player who knows what he's doing, except on gimmicky fights like twin valkyrs or Anub.

    * I hate people who are obsessed with putting out highest DPS (Because you're not one?)
    In my raids, we actually check the top dps to make sure they're switching to the correct targets and pulling their weight. Not standing there in one spot pulling off a standard rotation and saying: "Look at my LOLdps!"

    *DPS doesn't mean skill
    Dps does take skill. Agreed.

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  3. First time I have been on your blog, and I like the post you have up.

    Especially this one. And ofc its okay to zerg all others on gimmick fights, thrash etc. when you also can do it on boss's.
    Normally that also make the haters, sip it.

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  4. Wow, those four bulleted points sound a lot like a former raidleader of mine. Your answers help to explain why he's a -former- raidleader.

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